Prodigal
by Sevenstars
Summary: Companion piece to "The Beginning of the End," and sequel to "Men of Defiance," showing what happened after Jess returned to Sherman Ranch.


**Prodigal**

_by Sevenstars_

SUMMARY: A companion piece to "The Beginning of the End," leading up to Jess's return to Sherman Ranch after the death of Frank Bannister, and telling what might have happened when he got there. Beta'd by Lisa.

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Gentry's "doc" hadn't wanted Jess to leave for at least a couple of days, but Jess had had enough of Fort Defiance and the bitter taste it left in his mouth. It helped that for the first few days he and Stuart travelled along with the wagon train, which only did about ten or fifteen miles to the day. By the time they made Trinidad, just over the line into Colorado, and Stuart insisted on Jess seeing a doctor, he was regaining strength and the wound was healing, thanks in part to the Southwestern air, even dryer than the crisp Wyoming atmosphere to which he'd grown accustomed this last year.

"Are ya satisfied now?" he demanded as they left the doctor's office. "Figure I ain't likely to keel over any time soon? Can we get back on the trail?"

"Morning's time enough," Stuart told him. "I doubt you're going to agree to any but fifty-mile days from here on. I want to get a bath, a good meal, and at least one night in a decent bed before we start out. And besides that, we both need new hats. Don't know how we managed not to get our brains cooked these last few days without 'em."

Jess scowled at him. "For a U.S. Marshal, seems like you're kinda soft."

"Just an opportunist. In my line, you take what you can get when it's available, because you never know how long it will be till you can get it again. Settle down, Jess. If we take the most direct route we can make Cheyenne in a week. Then one more day for you to get to Laramie, and you'll be home."

Jess only grunted. He didn't want to try to explain that he might not have a home any more. Or why.

But if he believed that, why was he so anxious to get back to Laramie?

It was all just part and parcel of the confused way he felt, now that it was over. Grateful, and satisfied, and bitter. Angry and baffled and incomplete, yet fulfilled and justified. Worried (which wasn't at all like him), but eager. And, somehow, lost, as if he was a Missouri River steamer that had slipped its moorings in the night and started drifting with the current.

He understood why Gentry had taken it on himself to go out after the gang—they'd had a pard of his, that feller they called Reb. It was what you owed to a pard. Jess even respected Gentry the more for that act. But Stuart... he'd known why Jess needed to be the one to take Bannister down: Jess's quarrel with the man long predated anything Bannister had done outside the boundaries of Texas. Why hadn't he waked Jess up, offered him the chance to go along on that fool rescue mission, when he knew what it meant to Jess to be there at the kill?

And now that he no longer had that search, that focus, to define his life, what was he to do next? Most of what had befallen him over these last ten years had been tied in somehow with his quest for revenge. Even his service in the Confederate Army: he'd never been passionate about the Cause—it was why he carried no bitterness toward the Yankee government, or veterans of the Union, or blacks; only toward the man who'd been in charge of the prison camp where he'd spent those three terrible months, before he signed up with the U.S. Volunteers and got shipped out to New Mexico. No; it had been after Dixie Howard had taught him cardwork and proper gun skill, and he'd taken out two of the lesser lights of the gang, that he'd gotten caught up in the Confederate draft. The Confederacy had so much smaller a population than the Union states, it had had to institute one much earlier, only a year after the fighting began. Six months later, the law had been amended to exempt anyone owning twenty or more slaves. Southerners had already disapproved of it, seeing it as being at variance with their traditions of states' rights and rugged individualism, but the amendment made things worse: it served to heighten a sense of class conflict, with some saying it was "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight." Jess had scarcely ever seen a Negro in his life, till after the fire—in those days most of them were still bondsmen and heavily concentrated in East Texas, in the cotton and piney-woods country, far from his native Panhandle—and his boyhood had been spent in such isolation that he felt little connection to the social and political causes of the conflict. It wasn't that he was afraid; since he'd lost his family, he didn't feel like there was much to be afraid _of,_ any more. Rather, for him, the war had no personal meaning; it was all so far away, and Bannister was here—somewhere. It had been the draft, in the end, that had split him and Dixie up: Dixie refused to be forced into any fight, especially one in which he had no personal stake, and when it began to look as if even drifters weren't safe, he'd taken off for Mexico, figuring to make his way to California, where there wasn't any war. And Jess had been more or less press-ganged into the Confederate forces (though, thank God, he'd at least been taken up by the Cavalry, being as he already owned a horse—no Panhandle ranch kid could have borne the humiliation of becoming a groundslogger in the infantry), reaching the theater of conflict barely a month before the fall of Vicksburg closed the Mississippi and cut Texas off from the rest of the nascent nation.

Then there'd been those months of fighting, and the capture of his patrol by the Seventh Michigan Cavalry, and his spell in the hospital, and the camp, and then the Volunteers and Major Stanton and Billy Jacobs, and at last release, and he was free to search again. But by that time the Bannisters had left Texas, and it had taken him better than three years to find two of Frank's brothers...

It had been just over a year later, in Arizona, that word had reached him of Frank's capture, and suddenly, after nine years homeless, there just didn't seem much point to anything. Oh, he'd planned to be waiting the day Bannister got out of prison, just as he'd told Slim, but he'd been at loose ends, not sure what to do in the meantime. He'd finally settled on another cattle drive, this one to Dodge City and the northern ranges beyond, and on it he'd met Pete Morgan. And then Morgan had shown his true colors, and Jess had gotten his head busted and started on a new search, one that had led him to a little ranch in a valley under the shadow of the Laramie Range, to a restless dark-eyed kid and a sobersided blond ranchowner and an old man in a city derby who was about the best plain cook he'd ever eaten after (not that he was fool enough to let Jonesy know he thought so), to hard work and a warm bed and gentle care when he was injured or ill, and to what had begun to feel like friendship and acceptance... and even, dared he hope, a family again.

And he'd thrown that all away.

But he'd had to—hadn't he? He'd owed it to his dead. And Slim sure had had his part in it. Jess remembered what Slim had said—and more importantly, the tone in which he'd said it—the night before Jess left. Slim had known for many months that Jess's gun had been for hire before he got there, though of course not all the details of that hire; Jess still wasn't sure he trusted Slim _that_ much, to reveal just how often he had fought on the weaker side just because he thought it was right, how many times he'd taken rock-bottom pay or none at all because he couldn't ignore his own principles. That would be revealing where he was vulnerable, and Jess was shy of doing that—it was like blood on the trail, it drew predators. Why had it surprised Slim so much—why had he seemed so angry and disgusted—to learn that a man who hired his gun out would also kill, in fair fight, four of the men who had murdered his family? Why was it a worse thing to kill to settle a blood-debt, than to kill for (as far as Slim could know) money? Shouldn't it be opposites around? Jess shook his head in bewilderment. It all just went to prove that he'd been a plumb dang fool, to think he could ever make a new life. He was what he was, and no decent person was ever going to forget it—or let _him_ forget it. And what was more, he couldn't even understand how such people thought any more. Surely that meant he was past all saving.

No, better to cut his losses and go back to the Big Open.

Jess knew his own abilities—as horseman and horsebreaker, gunfighter, fist-fighter, tracker, hunter, scout, roper, all the many skills he had acquired in his short, hard life—and had no illusions about them. He was, in fact, not only confident in them, but proud of them, partly because they'd been hard-won by his own efforts, partly because they had enabled him to survive and pull his own weight ever since he was ten. He even understood, somewhere deep inside, that although not conventionally schooled, he was a good listener and a good learner, able to pick up new subjects quickly, retain them well, and integrate them with things he already knew. He had a shy but all-embracing curiosity about the world around him and had gathered up a considerable mass of information, though it tended to be trivial and unrelated to anything else, having come mostly out of listening, asking questions, and picking his way through the illustrated papers that were his chief form of reading. But as to his character and innate worth, his doubts were many and had come close to crippling him. Had he been given to self-analysis, he might have realized that most of this poor self-image was a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. He "knew what he was," as he sometimes said, and in his relations with other people (except for those soundly founded on his skills) he tended to make it obvious, on an unconscious level, that he didn't really expect to be accepted—which they sensed, and responded to as he expected. And this, in turn, came chiefly from being one of a large tribe of Harpers, mostly a no-good lot, either wild or shiftless, a few—the most prosperous—neither one, but definitely dishonest, or at least dubious: his pa had been about the best of them, at least till Francie, and even he'd been so besmirched by the family name that Jess's mother's folks, the Coopers, had no wish to see him marrying any of their girls. He'd had to elope with the daughter of his choice, and that had cut the young couple off from her kin, while his figured that he thought himself too good for them. About the only one of either outfit that had had any time or use for Sam Harper and his bride had been Uncle Cam—Cameron Cooper, Texas Ranger, who as a natural consequence of the line of work he was in had learned of necessity to judge human character. It had been by his good graces that an absentee ranchowner had agreed to hire Pa on as on-site foreman on his new Panhandle ranch—but for a share of the profits rather than wages. He threw in a four-room, thirty-three-and-a-half-foot-square house (or rather the lumber for it; Pa had to build it himself), a couple of milk cows, and ground enough to plant a truck garden, and it was in this bare-bones environment that Jess had been born and had spent his boyhood, knowing few other kids except for his own sibs, acquiring only what education his mother had the time to impart to him in between her household chores, and getting to town maybe twice a year. Maybe if Uncle Cam hadn't got himself killed down on the Border a couple of years before the fire, Jess could have, would have, gone to live with him and avoided a lot of the bad things and near-miss scrapes that had befallen him over the next decade. Shoot, he might have been a Ranger himself by now, instead of a half-broken-down, shot-up trying-to-reform gunslinger who'd been set up and lynched once, on Wanted posters twice, and in jail more times than he could well count.

Well, "if" was a mighty big word for the size of it, and it didn't do a man no good broodin' over what might have been.

"Are you comin'?" Stuart asked him, and he came back to the real world with a painful snap.

"Comin' where?"

"To get a hat," said Stuart patiently.

Jess shook his head. "Not now."

"You need money?" Stuart guessed. "I promised you the going rate. Government owes you twenty-six days' pay—might as well make it thirty. I can make out a warrant for you, any honest business'll have to accept it."

"Not now," Jess repeated. "I'm... I need to get some rest, do some thinkin'. If we're stayin' on, maybe I'll just get us a room. You go on."

Stuart frowned, but he knew almost better than anyone else just how near a thing that wound of Jess's had been, and definitely better than anyone else what-all more the younger man had been through on this hunt. "All right," he agreed. "I hear the Plains House has good beds and a cook who knows her business. Go get us a room and take our gear there, and I'll join you later."

**SR**

Trim Stuart watched Jess plod off down the streetand shook his head. He'd had plenty of opportunity to see just how rawhide-tough Jess was—classic Texan through and through—and even given everything he'd been through on this chase, it seemed... wrong... somehow that his feet should drag like that, his shoulders slump so wearily.

It was only minutes ago that he'd been hot to get back on the trail. And now... now he just seemed wiped out. Exhausted and at loose ends and not much inclined to care what became of him.

Stuart had known a good deal more of Jess Harper than Jess suspected, by the time he rode into Sherman Ranch. Not all the details, no, but enough to suspect that there was some personal connection between Jess and Bannister—certainly enough to know just who'd been responsible for taking Steve and Bert Bannister out of action, though he hadn't known exactly why till that night in the cave; after all, that kind of man made enemies all over, and there might be many reasons for one of them to want blood. After Jess and Slim Sherman had broken up that attempt on General Sherman's life, which was naturally something that would interest a Federal Marshal, Trim had done some digging back into Harper's past, using his connections in the marshals' service and through the law-enforcement community—many U.S. Marshals started out as local law—and had built up a fair picture of the man's career before he'd come to live at Sherman's place. It hadn't always been a good one—Harper had been with at least a couple of pretty rough outfits in his short life, King Bartlett, the Dolemans—until he'd heard from Branch McGarry. Branch had seen a different side of Jess Harper: a man who'd been rough-used by corrupt officials in Reconstruction Texas, but hadn't been soured on the law by it; a man who could respond to McGarry's efforts on his behalf with respect and even something halfway like friendship. There was a lot more to Jess, Stuart thought, than maybe Jess himself knew.

And now that he no longer had an unsettled blood-debt hanging around his neck, he was going to need something to give him purpose, or he'd probably go the way of so many young men who were good with a gun and had no roots, no home, no family, no place in the world. And Stuart didn't want that to happen. Jess had a lot of untapped potential; he could go a long way for the good, if he wanted to. If he felt it worthwhile to try.

Right now, Stuart thought, Jess was standing at a crossroads, and didn't know which fork he wanted to take. And even though the man hadn't been able, in the end, to help him nail Bannister, Stuart still felt some sense of obligation to him for what he _had_ done: Trim had worked with a good few trackers since he'd first pinned a badge on, and Jess was right up there with the best of them—without his help, Stuart doubted he'd have ever gotten as far along the trail as he had.

He was wild as a young mustang, was Jess, and proud as an eagle, and quick-tempered and mule-stubborn, like most Texans. But brave as any lion, too, and firm founded in a basic decency that so far had kept him from sliding over the line, close to it though he may have skated on occasion. Honest in his way, though pragmatic; frank and free of vice, and not bitter over the war, either, as so many Southerners were. These were things Stuart had trained himself to watch for and to know when he found them. He wondered if Slim Sherman knew just what he'd had in this young man.

He remembered that Jess had scarcely spoken of Sherman or his spread at all, these last weeks—and Stuart had tried, diplomatically, to get him to do so; he'd been frankly curious about how a man like Jess had ended up working as a thirty-a-month cowhand on a postage-stamp ranch and relay station when with his kind of speed he could have been wearing a town marshal's badge somewhere for up to $1000 a month, or troubleshooting for some railroad or Cattlemen's Association, or just hiring out free-lance and making as much as $800 a month for a long-term job, or five figures for a short one. Remembered what Jess had said of Sherman after they'd finished supper: _"...____he's saved my life a couple times. I owe him and I trust him."__ Had something happened, after Stuart went off to bed, that had altered their relationship? It might explain a lot of Jess's sullenness and silence... if he'd begun to feel some connection to Sherman and the rest of them, begun finally to let himself put down roots..._

_And it wouldn't be all that strange if he had. Some of the digging Stuart had done had uncovered some surprising things about this young Texan. He might be rough around the edges, quick-tempered and quick to take offense, and a fast gun; but still he had principles, a code, a conscience. He hated people who picked on people smaller and weaker than themselves, and people who rode roughshod over whoever was in their way just to get their hands on something they didn't have any right to. That would have come of what the Bannisters had done to him and to his family._

_A small outfit like Sherman's could use a man like him on its side, just to weight the ledger a little bit in its favor._

_Of course the marshals' service—perennially undermanned and chasing phantoms of one kind or another—could use him too._

_His mind made up, Stuart turned to go looking for that hat he needed._

_**SR**_

They returned to Wyoming at rather a better pace than they had left it, not having to lose time unravelling the trail of the fleeing "new Bannister gang." They rode north steadily, chasing the warming weather, and in the soothing glow of the strengthening sun Jess's wound slowly continued to heal. But Jess, confused and emotionally exhausted, didn't give it a lot of help. His appetite was poor and he didn't sleep well; there were dreams, and there were times when he simply lay awake for hours, struggling with the questions that haunted him, with the issue of what he should do next. Having to deal with the stress, his body couldn't devote proper energy to repairing the physical damage, and he endured a fair amount of pain, though he stubbornly refused to complain; if Stuart noticed the fine lines around his eyes and mouth and asked, he'd only say shortly that he was "fine," and keep on riding.

Seven days out of Trinidad, they reached the outskirts of Cheyenne. Stuart pulled up and looked across at his companion. "Well," he said, "this is the end of the line for me. I don't even like to think of everything that must have piled up in my office in five weeks, but that's the way it goes. At least we did what we set out for."

"I reckon," Jess agreed, but he didn't sound as if he believed it.

"It's getting late," the lawman proceeded. "You might as well stay over. It's been a long ride."

"Yeah," Jess agreed, with a half sigh, "it has."

"And before I forget," Stuart went on, "here's your warrant." He drew a folded piece of paper out of his vest pocket. "Hand this to your banker in Laramie and he'll give you cash for it, just like a draft or a check."

Jess accepted the paper automatically and put it in his own pocket, then reached up to the badge on his vest. "Reckon you'll be wantin' this back," he said, struggling one-handed with the pin.

"Let me do that," Stuart said, and Jess surrendered. "You know," the older man continued, "you don't have to give it back if you don't want to. I could use you. You'd make a good deputy."

For a moment Jess was tempted. Forty dollars a month wasn't much more than what Slim was—had been—paying him, and it didn't include his keep, but give him one decent poker game every week and he could easily amplify it to seventy-five—more than enough for a man and his horse to live on comfortably—even if he only staked five dollars at a time at nickel-ante; and the job would be a way to use his skills on the right side of the law, and to stay in Wyoming, close enough that he could drop in on his... friends... now and then, see how they were doing, come to their aid if they ever needed him. He'd never worn a badge till Rock Springs, and he'd been surprised at how good it had made him feel. It had hurt him to have to kill Tully Hatch, as it had hurt to have to kill Roney—he'd been forced to both acts against his will; but it hadn't embittered him. He understood that even in the peace-officering trade there must inevitably be bad men as well as good, just as there were in all fields of human endeavor (he'd run into a few of the former, over the years), and he understood too how easy it could be for a man to fall under the spell of the wrong kind of woman—he'd done it himself with Laurel DeWalt, after all. You shouldn't let a man's one moment of weakness blacken his entire life, or the reputations of all the men who followed his trade in a true and honest way; that was why Jess had resolved to take the truth about the bank money to his grave.

But even if he did accept Stuart's offer, he realized, he still ought to go back, just for a while. He owed it to Slim and Andy and Jonesy to let them know he was still alive, to tell them that Bannister was finished with. And in any case, accepting would mean staying in Wyoming, and that would mean that soon or late he'd be needing his heavy sheep-lined jacket and the rest of the winter kit he'd put together last year with Slim's guidance and help. Plus, he realized now, he'd left something else at Sherman Ranch, something important. His "gunfighter's gun," his personally modified Colt. He'd gotten so used to not carrying it (and how, after five years hiring it out, had that happened?) that he hadn't even thought to get it out of its safe cubby in the chimneystack when he gathered up his truck more than a month ago. That ivory-handled six-shooter had cost him forty dollars, against the twelve he'd paid for the serviceable walnut-handled one now at his side, and then he'd paid a gunsmith to improve the balance of it and mold the buttplates to his hand, and had filed off the sear and front sight and honed down the action himself. He sure didn't want to abandon his investment, any more than he did the sixty-odd dollars (no, more like a hundred; he'd been back a month on his pay, and Slim had covered the jacket to make up for it) that his cold-weather gear represented—and he couldn't be expected to earn his living without his proper tool, could he?

And yet...

Soometimes it seemed like he'd spent his whole life searching—first for Bannister, later for the man who'd cut him down when he was lynched in Laredo, and later still Pete Morgan... searching, maybe, too, for a place that could be a home, to stand in for the one he'd lost, and people in it to be his family...

And surely it seemed that he remembered, from the time in January when he'd had the fever, the sound of Slim's voice out of the thick hot darkness, quietly soothing, encouraging him to hang on, telling him they'd get through this... calling him "pard." And if he was to be a rancher's pard, surely that rancher's home must become his too...

No, that couldn't be right. Pard was a Texas word.

But Slim had been to Texas, had worked with Texans; there was no good reason he wouldn't know it. And Jess had wanted a pard, wanted one for so long...

No, it was time to go. That had been fever; he'd been dreaming.

And yet Slim had come after him to Canada, and to Tumavaca, and once to the Utah Territory, where they'd stood together against the man who'd come to take Jess down... things a pard _would_ do. Jess remembered what he'd realized that time—that Sherman Ranch was the place he belonged, then and for all his life. That if he couldn't have this newfound home, the world wasn't worth living in. Had that changed? Had he, or Slim?

_I'm so tired, _he told himself, half in despair. _ I ain't thinkin' straight, I know that. I can't make this kind of choice, not now. I need to know... I gotta go back, gotta find out, one way or th'other...no matter how it hurts, I gotta know._

"Let me think on it a day or two," he said slowly. "I got some business back at the ranch, some things I'd have to pick up, even if I take you up on it." He managed a weak grin. "If you got a lot of work piled up, you'll be here a spell, I reckon."

"All right," Stuart agreed, and unfastened the badge. "It's been an honor to ride with you, Jess," he added, offering his hand. "And if I don't see you again, good luck, and take care of yourself."

"Thanks, Trim," Jess responded quietly, accepting the handshake. He thought of saying something about how he should have been taken along on the rescue, or about having forgiven Stuart for not taking him (though he wasn't sure he completely had), but he wasn't certain which he really wanted to do, so he contented himself with meeting the older man's honest eyes and pressing his hand as strongly as he could. Stuart was a good man, he thought. That made three U.S. Marshals he could consider his friends—Jim Tenney, and Branch McGarry, and now Trim. And that was about three more than most men in his line ever managed to. For a moment it occurred to him to wonder what that meant.

He watched as Stuart reined his horse toward the center of Cheyenne, hesitating. But the lawman had been right, he realized. He wouldn't get much farther before it began to get dark, and Traveller deserved a rest and a feed. He'd find a livery barn and put the bay up, with grain just for the night, and pay an extra quarter to sleep in the loft (or maybe a vacant stall if they had one—he wasn't sure he was quite up to climbing ladders yet), something he'd done more than once in his years on the drift. And wasn't there one of those All-You-Can-Eat places down near the capitol building? He could fill up for another two bits and still afford the same for the standard breakfast at some café before he set off in the morning. That way, too, he could get the stableman to get the saddle off and on—his arm and back still weren't up to it; Stuart had been doing it for him since they'd left Fort Defiance. It always amazed him to realize how many different muscles you used to do just little everyday things, muscles over your ribs, in your legs, in your back.

And then, come morning, he'd get on the road and over the pass into the Laramie Basin, and discharge his obligations to Slim and the others.

**SR**

Slim was greasing the running gear on the big wagon, and Jonesy was holding the bucket, when Andy came racing over from the corral. "Jonesy, Slim, look who's coming in. It's Jess!"

Both men looked up, recognizing first Jess's star-faced bay, then the Texan's familiar saddle-stance, the vest, the way the dark hair flagged above his forehead. Slim's first thought, ridiculous as it seemed, was, _What's the blame fool done with his hat? He knows better than to ride without one in the sun at this time of year._

Jonesy squinted, peering intently toward the approaching rider. "Yeah, he looks mighty tired, too."

"Maybe he'll be happy to stick around home for a while," Slim observed, hearing the note of bitterness in his own voice.

"Hey, he's got his arm in a sling," Andy pointed out.

"Why, he has at that," said Jonesy.

_That man gets busted up more often than anyone I ever knew,_ Slim thought. _Plain accident-prone, that's what he is. Though considerin' what he went to do, I doubt this was any accident. No, I guess somebody knew just what he was doin', and I bet I know who it was, too._ "Well, he'll get more than his arm in a sling if he goes hightailin' off like that again," he declared.

"Work sure did stack up around here while he was gone," Jonesy noted. "Couldn't see over the top of it from one day to the next."

"Yeah, he sure slickered out of it all right," said Slim. "You know, I never have met a man who could beat him when it comes to dodgin' work." He didn't really mean that, and he knew he didn't even as he said it. Jess might be careful about pacing himself, but he didn't shirk; he was a hard, steady worker and a top hand. _So why am I sayin' it?_

"You haven't done so bad yourself," Jonesy observed. "It was Andy and me who did most of the work around here."

"Yeah," Andy agreed belligerently.

"Or maybe you've forgotten about lyin' in bed with a sore foot, practically all the time that Jess was gone," Jonesy continued, jabbing a finger at Slim's chest.

That was an exaggeration, but Slim admitted privately that it was probably what made him maddest, not at Jess, who'd had nothing to do with it, but at himself. He'd known that black stage leader was a skittish one, but he'd let his attention wander just long enough for the animal to step firmly on his foot, iron shoe and all, when it shied at a passing Steller's jay; he'd been lucky not to have broken any bones. (Well, at that, maybe Jess _had _had something to do with it: where else would his mind have been when it wasn't on the job, except with his absent friend? Still, he should have taken better care.) As it was, he'd suffered a severe bruise and some bad swelling, and Jonesy had had to keep it poulticed and dose him with valerian and poplar-bud tea to keep the pain within bearable bounds. Indeed, grousing aside, it had been Jonesy who insisted that he had to stay off the foot for a good ten days, and he hadn't been up to his usual standard for another five afterward. "Yeah, but you're not goin' to tell him, are you, Jonesy? Or I'd have nothin' to complain about at all."

Jonesy grinned and winked, watching as Andy went racing to meet his friend. "Hey, Jess," he shouted in welcome.

Slim watched his brother escorting their wanderer in, clinging to the stirrup and chattering away a mile a minute as he bombarded Jess with questions about his trip, about Stuart, about the sling on his arm. Jess's absence, his longest to date except for Tumavaca (and Slim had at least been with him for over half of that time), had been tough on all of them. Andy had had a lot of dreams, Jonesy had been distracted, and Slim had been just plain worried. Not just for Jess's physical safety, or even for his emotional state, but about whether he'd even come back if he survived. Over and over he'd berated himself for the way he'd behaved that last night, had asked himself what had gotten into him that he'd let what he knew firsthand about Jess, about the kind of man he was, be overcome by hidebound old prejudices. He'd thought himself a more just man than that. How would he ever be able to make it up to the Texan if Jess didn't come home and give him a chance?

When he thought about it, he decided, that was at the root of the half-flippant, half-scornful way he was talking now. He was so used to having to be strong and invulnerable, as head of the family these five-going-on-six years, that he found it hard to express how truly deep his concern was for this man he had come to think of as "pard." _Keep a hold on yourself, _he thought. _Watch what you say. He's back, thank God, and maybe you can make it up to him now for the way you sent him off. Whatever else you do, you mustn't drive him away again._

Jess drew Traveller up by the endgate of the wagon. "Jonesy," he greeted, with a nod, and then, hesitantly, "Hey, Slim."

Slim didn't even have to think about how to respond. "Welcome home, Jess. Good to have you back."

Jess's eyes slid away from him. "Thanks," he said softly. Not _It's good to be home;_ just _Thanks_. Slim looked him over carefully. Jess looked more trail-worn than his horse did. He'd always been lean and lithe, carrying no spare flesh to cushion the muscle and bone close under his skin, and though Jonesy had managed to build him up some after a year of good, plentiful home cooking, he looked now as if he'd dropped it all off again. Under the heavy tan—where had he gotten so tan this time of year?—and the dirt and stubble, his face was thinned to the point of gauntness, and his eyes were shadowed with lack of sleep. His shoulders were bowed as if beneath a weight of pain, yet he wasn't pale; he just looked physically and emotionally done in, _like the frazzled end of a_ _misspent life,_ as Slim's pa used to put it.

"Where you hurt, boy?" Jonesy demanded.

Jess hesitated and blinked as if he had to replay the question in his mind to get a sense of its meaning. "Took a bullet in the side, about halfway down," he said slowly. "Went right through, cracked a rib."

"When's the last time you had it looked at?" the old man pursued.

Jess had to think about that. "Trinidad. 'Round eight, nine days back, I reckon."

"Trinidad!" Slim exclaimed. "Trinidad in Colorado?" He'd been there once or twice, after the war, on trail drives, and he knew how far it was from Laramie. He also knew that less than a day's ride to the west of it lay the wild country near the headwaters of the "Picketwire" River (as many Americans called the Purgatoire), where there were many caves in which fugitive badmen found refuge. Stuart had said that the original Bannister gang had spent some time in Colorado; maybe that was where Jess's quarry had headed. "Did Bannister lead you that far?"

"Led us all the way to New Mexico," Jess answered. For a moment his weary features hardened. "It's done. Ain't no more Bannister gang. No more Bannister neither."

"Marshal Stuart all right?"

"Yeah, he's fine. Not a scratch on him. Left him at Cheyenne to catch up on his paperwork." Jess raised his good hand, with the reins still held in it, toward his forehead, as if to ease a headache or a bout of dizziness.

"Get down off that critter," Jonesy ordered, "and get in the house. That dressing needs to be checked and most likely changed, and I want a look at the wound. And you're gonna get yourself a bath and a shave and some clean clothes before you even dare sit down on any of the chairs, much less get in bed. Andy, I need you to help me. Slim, you see to his horse."

Secretly glad for the way the old man was taking charge—the task of caring for his friend's mount would give him time to calm himself and think—Slim reached up and held the bridle while Jess slowly and carefully swung down, snatching at the horn and clinging to it a moment to support himself, as if his legs wouldn't hold him up. Jonesy moved in quickly to take some of his weight. "When's the last time you slept?" he demanded. "If Traveller wasn't in half decent shape I'd think you'd rode straight through from Trinidad without a break."

"I ain't... ain't been sleepin' too good," Jess admitted, slurring a bit. "Thinkin' too much..." He leaned wearily into Jonesy's wiry strength. Andy moved up on his other side, concern plain on his face as he realized just how worn out his hero was, and added his own support. Slim watched as they helped the exhausted Texan toward the ranchhouse and found himself thinking, with a kind of selfish relief, that at least in this shape he wasn't likely to go kiting off again any time soon. Maybe he'd even sit still long enough for Slim to apologize for the way he'd behaved.

_I've had time to think, these five weeks,_ he told himself. _And I understand so much now. Why he took so long to bond with us—except for Andy, which he probably couldn't help, because of Johnny; he must have been scared to the marrow that if he let himself care about us, we'd be taken from him, like his father and "the littl'uns." Why he kept droppin' out of the gunfighter's trade and doin' other things—ridin' dispatch for the Army, shotgun for stage lines, goin' on trail drives, huntin' wild horses, breakin' broncs. Why he was willing to accept my offer of a job, even knowin'—or at least guessin'—that I'd expect him to lay his gun aside. He never really wanted to be a fast gun, never looked for the name, the way some do. He had to learn how to do it, because he saw it was the only chance he had of livin' long enough to settle the score for his family—and maybe, too, of settling it at all._ He remembered what Jess had said the night before he left, how from the first day he'd come here he'd wanted "to stop, and maybe try to forget." Remembered, too, a time, once, last fall, when Jess had been wounded, how in the grip of his delirium he'd insisted _I don't do that no more._ Even then, he'd wanted to make the change; it was just that life hadn't really given him much of a chance. _Would he have stayed till Bannister had served his time? Would he have gone off then, the way he does—maybe not botherin' to say why—and finished it, and come home, his duty fulfilled at last? Would we ever have known the whole story of what made him who he is?_

"Come on, Trav," he said quietly, using Jess's pet-name for the bay, and the animal followed him willingly into the barn.

**SR**

Once Jess was in the kitchen and seated on a stool in the middle of the floor, Jonesy sent Andy outside to start a camp kettle of water on an outside fire, the way they did for the laundry in good weather. "Set the tub in the side yard, where it's in a good patch of sun but out of the breeze," he ordered, "and hang up a blanket so he won't scandalize the stage when it comes in. Now," he added to Jess as the boy fled, "let's take a look at this wound. When'd you get it?"

Again Jess had to think about his answer, as if he were counting back days. "Round two weeks," he decided.

Jonesy removed the young man's vest and shirt, unbuttoned his longjohn top and slipped it down gently over his shoulders. The first thing he saw was that the only discoloration visible on the bandaging was that of age; the second was the extent of it, and the third how securely it had been wrapped. _Whoever did that knew his_ _business, _he thought, relieved. Carefully he began peeling off the layers of soft fabric. Jess submitted quietly, his head down, shoulders slumped. _He looks plumb whipped,_ Jonesy told himself. _And not near as pleased as he should, if what Slim said about that Bannister was the truth._

He had to soak the last couple of layers to remove them without pulling the scabs, but he was relieved to find that the wounds were almost healed and there were no signs of seepage or of the hard, red, swollen skin that would indicate an abscess—which, if Jess had gone without seeing a doctor for more than a week, would have been entirely too possible. Jess's skin was dry, but not fevered, neither parched nor overly sweaty. He winced and made a tight-lipped sound of pain when Jonesy probed gently around the wounds, but it was natural that they might still be a bit tender, especially since, knowing Jess, Jonesy was willing to bet he hadn't rested nearly as long as he should have before he set out on the trail again. "Well," he said at length, "you seem to be doin' real well. Have you been spittin' up any blood? Coughin'? Havin' sharp pain when you breathe?"

"No," Jess answered. "Hurts when I lay on it..."

"That's normal," Jonesy assured him. "As fast as you heal, I'm bettin' you had a good bit less pain within three or four days. Probably wasn't a severe crack—you said the bullet went through; most likely it was hairline, closer to a graze than anything else. You want to keep from any quick or jerky movements, bendin', heavy liftin', but in another week or so, maybe two at worst, you should be seein' a pretty fair improvement. I'll wrap you up again after you've had your bath; the main thing about ribs, since you can't splint 'em or cast 'em, is to protect 'em from further damage and leave 'em heal on their own. As for the wounds, they're almost fully closed; I'll just put patches over 'em and fasten some gauze around to hold 'em in place. Maybe put somethin' on 'em first to ease a little of that pain—if I could'a' got at 'em sooner I might'a' been able to spare you a couple more scars."

"Scars don't matter none," said Jess. "They ain't half so bad as the ones you can't see." Then he tightened his lips as if he thought he'd said too much.

"No need to pretend, son," Jonesy told him. "You don't think Slim didn't have to tell us why you'd just up and take off like that, did you? We know who you and Stuart went after, and we know some of why."

"Wisht he hadn't," said Jess, but there was no anger in the words, only resignation.

"Why?" Jonesy retorted. "Think we didn't have a right to know? You're family, boy. Thought you knew that, after Christmas, and the fever."

Jess didn't respond, just stared at the floor. Jonesy patted his bare shoulder—he'd gotten as thin as a clothes rack again—and went to get some dressings together, and a pot of purple cone-plant paste to slather on the wounds.

Jess's left arm and side were still lame, so he needed some help getting cleaned up, though he was able to shave himself. Afterward Jonesy redressed the wounds and he and Andy helped the Texan get into fresh clothes and settled in his favorite rocking chair. The bath had restored him a bit, though he still looked drawn and weary and winced when he moved. He kept eyeing the door as if watching for Slim, but Slim was occupied with the day's last stage, which, without anyone to help him, was a good two hours of work.

"Start peelin' the potatoes," Jonesy told Andy, "and don't you bother Jess with a lot of questions, hear? He's tired. He's come a long way—four hundred miles or better. Give him a day or two before you start pesterin' him."

"Okay," Andy agreed, his voice subdued; he'd seen how gaunt the Texan had become, and it troubled him. Jonesy saw him established in the kitchen with a knife and a bucket and potatoes enough for a nice batch of pan-browned ones, and went out to find Slim.

"How is he?" was the rancher's first question.

"Oh, the wounds aren't much," Jonesy told him. "Healin' up normally, though not quite as fast as he us'ally does; not enough sleep, from what he's let slip, and too much travel too soon—if we can get him to stay put a week or two and feed him up some, he should start gettin' back to his old self quick enough. But that cracked rib must'a' give him a rough time, ridin' all that way. Likely was hurtin' him more eight or ten days ago than when he was first shot. He's lucky whoever fixed him up in Trinidad knew what they were doin'; they strapped his side up real good, held it tight in place. Didn't do much for the pain, though, and that's close to wore him down to nothin'. That and maybe frettin' on whether he'd be welcome here, after all this time away. He's beat, Slim. Tired half to death and down ten good pounds or more. And awful quiet, too."

"I was afraid of that," Slim admitted. "I treated him badly the night before he left, Jonesy. I gave him a hard time about wantin' to even the score for his family, about the other men he'd killed. I think I knew it was wrong even when I was sayin' it, but I couldn't seem to control myself. I was afraid of losin' him; I didn't want him to go, and I said all the wrong things, just like Pa said them to me when I wanted to enlist. I've been worried he might never come back, might never give me a chance to make it up. And now if he's withdrawin' like you say... he may just be tryin' to get the strength up to leave us for good, as soon as he feels fit enough."

The old man thought about that. "Maybe," he admitted after a bit. "But if he is, I don't think it's somethin' he wants, Slim. I think he knows where he should be just as much as you do; he's just tired and scared."

"Scared?" Of all the possibilities Slim had considered, that would have been the last on the list—if it had ever made the list to begin with. "What does he have to be scared of?"

"Bein' alone," Jonesy replied quietly. "Same as you. And bein' less than he feels you expect of him. Keep in mind, he hasn't had anythin' but his own ideas of right and wrong to live up to for a long time. You challenge him to be more—to be everything you think he can be. You've give him a mark to shoot at, maybe somethin' to live for besides just gettin' that score paid off. He wants it, but he's afraid of it at the same time, afraid he'll disappoint you, afraid he'll fail; you got to remember, in his line failure has a tendency to be fatal, so the prospect of it scares him. Now, you know you made a mistake, so you need to make him see that you know it; probably he's thinkin' you want him gone, after what you said to him. And you need to help him understand that the only obligations on him are the ones he chooses to accept, and that you don't expect him to make himself over in a day, or a month, or even a year, maybe. Takes time to undo things just like to do 'em."

Slim blinked. "I always knew you were savvy, Jonesy, but how did you come up with that?"

"Watchin' the two of you this last year. You can't step outside your skins and see how you are with each other. I can look at you together and see how you're different and how you're alike." Quietly, he added: "Whatever you do, Slim, you can't take no for an answer, not now. Like I said, he's just finished somethin' he's been ten years waitin' for. Now he needs to have a new goal to fix on or he'll be left without any direction. And with a hand as fast as his, that's the very last thing he needs."

"That I can believe," the younger man agreed. "I think it may be just what I was worryin' about myself."

**SR**

Supper was cold boiled ham, with pan-browned potatoes, hot beans in a thick gravy, hot biscuits with butter and honey, strips of melon pickle, pepper relish, and spiced onions. There were baked apples for dessert. "If I'd known you were comin' home," Jonesy told Jess, "I'd'a' made sure I had a pie, and those oyster patties you like. You give me tomorrow, I'll cook up a storm."

"I should'a' telegraphed from Cheyenne last night," Jess observed apologetically. "The mornin' stage could'a' fetched it out. Didn't think, I reckon." Cleaned up, and after an hour or so nap in the rocker, he looked a bit less as if he was likely to give out at any moment, though still inward and worn. He'd hardly spoken during the meal, except for requests to pass something.

"Likely you were just too focused on gettin' here to remember we had no way to know you were even back in the Territory," Slim suggested. "No harm done; we can make your homecoming celebration last just that much longer." Then: "Do you feel up to a little time on the porch, or would you rather make an early night of it? Jonesy thought you must be pretty washed out, from the wound and the rib and that long trip."

"I turn in at this hour, I'll be awake at four in the mornin'," Jess replied. "I reckon I'd like to sit a spell."

"Go on, then. I'll be along in a minute," Slim told him. He waited until he heard the front door open and shut, then turned to Jonesy. "I don't know how willing to talk he's likely to be," he said, "and he may need some help. Have you got anything around for medicinal purposes only?"

"Always," Jonesy said. Slim waited while he fetched the bottle from its hiding place—he was pretty sure he knew where it was, but he always went along with the charade—and got a couple of tin cups out of the back of the cabinet. "Remember, go easy on him. I'm not sure why, but he seems to be in a pretty fragile state emotionally. I'd'a' thought he'd rather be glad he'd settled the score."

"So did I," Slim agreed, "and that's one of the things that has me worried. I know he doesn't take pleasure in killin', but he should at least be able to find some satisfaction in the fact that the whole ordeal's finally over."

Jess was sitting in one of the homemade chairs, not on the rail or the porch floor as he usually did. Slim didn't comment; he was sure his friend's side was still bothering him, enough that he didn't want to deal with the discomfort of either of those spots. The rancher moved to light the reflectored lantern mounted alongside the door, and Jess spoke softly. "Can you leave it? I've gotten... kinda used to the dark, this last week or so."

_I'm hopin' the only dark you mean is the absence of light,_ Slim thought, _not the darkness that can settle on a man's spirit. I guess I know somethin' about that, after Abby, and Pa, and Ma_. "All right," he said, and considered for a moment where best to settle himself. He finally decided on the rail by the steps; he wanted to be near, but not so near that Jess would interpret it as a threat or as unwarranted pushiness. "I'm glad you're back safe and sound, Jess," he began. "We all are. You know that, don't you?" _If you'd say something, _he thought, _if you'd call me on the way I acted, I'd feel better about it. At least I'd know that you've been thinkin' about it, the same as I have. I'd know we were on the same page._

Hesitation. "I reckon."

"You said," Slim proceeded, "that Bannister led you all the way down to New Mexico?"

"Yeah. Place called Fort Defiance."

"Fort Defiance?" Slim echoed. "I knew men in the war who'd served there. I thought it was in Navajo country, in what they call Arizona now."

"I know the one you mean," Jess agreed. "This wasn't the same, though. Named after it, maybe, but on the Santa Fe Trail, and built by some former Southron soldiers headed up by a feller name of Gentry. A tradin' post, not a military one."

"I see," Slim said. He paused a moment or two, wondering what to say next, and finally decided to just go with his instincts. He didn't do that much, but since Jess had lived here he had learned that he could depend on them, that when he made choices based on what they told him, the results were usually good. "So... you got Bannister, then."

"No," said Jess softly. "No, I didn't."

"I thought you said—"

"I did, and he is. But it wasn't me that done it. It was Stuart, and Gentry. Me, I was laid up in the doc's infirmary. Didn't know what they was fixin' to do till it was too late to have a piece of it."

Slim considered this. It explained a good deal of what Jonesy had described as Jess's "emotionally fragile" state. When you'd lived mostly for revenge for over a decade, when you'd thought you had it within your grasp, and then you lost out on it in the end... that would be hard for anyone to bear; perhaps most of all for a Texan. "I'm sorry," he said.

Jess looked up quickly. "What you got to be sorry for? Wasn't no doin' of yours."

"I know," Slim agreed. "I'm just... regretful, I guess, that... that you couldn't put an end to things yourself. I know you felt you had an obligation to your family; you'd made them a promise, like you said. I know you care a lot about keepin' your promises, your word, and that's as it should be." He was searching for the right way to tie this to an apology when Jess spoke again.

"I ain't sayin' I don't feel I got cheated out of my due," he said. "I know if I did, you'd know I was lyin'. I don't care what Bannister done outside of Texas. Far's I'm concerned, what he done to us Harpers took... what's the word?... precedence?... over all of it. He was mine. I had the right. And yet..." he went on, "maybe it ain't the promise that I mind so much. He's dead and they're paid for, even if I couldn't be the one that took him down. Maybe I had a bigger part in it than I thought. Stuart said he might'a' never been able to get Bannister in prison if he'd had his whole gang with him, and I was the one took four of 'em out of action, two of Frank's brothers amongst 'em. Likely that's more'n any other man ever done. So I reckon I done my bit. It's..." He hesitated again, then: "I reckon I just wanted to know why."

Slim's brows drew together. "I don't follow."

"I wanted to ask him why. Why he told off them fellers to go 'round the back and fire the house like he done. He could'a' found another way of dealin' with us even if we was shootin' at him. He could'a' just had some of his boys keep us busy while the rest took care of the crew and run off the horses. That was what they'd come for, the horses, not loot. I know 'cause they didn't try to plunder any of the other buildings before they torched 'em."

Slim tilted his head. "They burned the other buildings too?"

Jess nodded. "Didn't leave a thing standin'."

Slim whistled softly. "How did you and Francie and Johnny ever survive?" he asked in honest amazement. "I've never been to the Panhandle, but I've heard about it. It's no place to be left out on your own."

"Reckon we got lucky," Jess admitted. "They could burn the buildings that was aboveground, but they couldn't burn the root cellars, nor the well. That give us food and water and shelter, and we could pick up guns and ammunition from the bodies of the dead. And a couple of the horses must'a' broke away in the confusion, scared of the flames, maybe, and later they wandered back, homin', like horses do when they're scared. Our boss wrangler was half Comanche, he'd taught me most what I know about dealin' with horses, and I managed to get near enough to 'em to put my belt and Johnny's around their necks and lead 'em into a corral that was still standin'. About then Francie found a lariat somebody'd dropped, and we made Indian bridles, and I got on one of the horses and Francie and Johnny on the other one, and we rode to the next ranch. Thirty-five miles, it was. The folks there got us to Amarillo, and I left Francie and Johnny with the Bradys and started huntin'."

Slim could only shake his head slowly, astonished at the grit of those three young Texans, bereaved, in shock, perhaps injured, yet grimly resolved to live. "Maybe that's the answer," he said.

"What is?"

"That they burned all the buildings, not just your house. Maybe they would have burned it even if you hadn't been shootin' at 'em, because... well, because that was what they did. Jonesy told me a little about that outfit; he said burnin' houses was kind of their trademark."

Jess seemed to examine this possibility. "I reckon that could be so." He sighed. "It don't make us seem real mattersome in the grand scheme of things, does it? Like we was just... flies in his way, or somethin'."

Slim could hear the hollow echo in his voice and moved quickly to counter the sense of low worth that he knew such thoughts must bring. "To _him,_ maybe. But his opinion shouldn't matter. You know what he was; you've had time enough to find out. What other people think shouldn't matter as much as the truth you're certain of, and least of all people like that who don't care about anything except gettin' what they want."

Silence while Jess pondered. "Maybe," he allowed in the end, though he didn't exactly sound as if he believed it. _At least,_ Slim thought, _I've given him somethin' to think about._

"I told Andy and Jonesy about... about your family," he offered cautiously.

Jess only nodded. "I kinda guessed that, from somethin' Jonesy said when he was lookin' me over."

"Are you... offended? Maybe I should have waited till you could do it yourself—"

"No," Jess told him. "No, it's okay. I might'a' never come back to do it, maybe, if things'd gone a little bit different down yonder. I reckon they had a right to know, all they've put up with from me this last year."

"It wasn't an issue," Slim said. "It never has been. I've told you, you're part of this outfit, and we look after our own."

Jess's eyes flashed, but Slim couldn't tell what was going on behind them: he didn't quite have his fighting mask on, but he was managing a good poker face, partly perhaps because he was trying to keep a tight hold on his pain. "So," the rancher began again, after a moment, "what now?"

Jess's head turned briefly toward him. "Don't know what you mean."

"I think you do," Slim told him. "Jonesy said somethin' to me earlier that made a lot of sense. He said you've just come to the end of somethin' you've been waitin' ten—no, I guess eleven—years for. A long time. Almost half your life. He said you need something new to fix on. Otherwise you'll have no direction left, and all you'll do is drift, maybe the rest of your life." He paused. "I think your life is worth more than that, Jess. I don't want to think of you just... lettin' go."

"Times," said Jess quietly, "lettin' go is the best thing you can do."

"Not of your own life," Slim insisted. "Never that. Not you, Jess. You're not made that way. I've seen it too many times, this last year, not to believe that."

Jess sighed. "Ain't thinkin' about that. But ain't there somethin' in the Bible about a season for everythin'?"

"_To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven," _Slim quoted. "That was Pa's favorite verse."

"That's the one," Jess agreed. "I can recollect Ma sayin' that sometimes, when Pa got discouraged... they never had much, but Ma, she was always one to look on the bright side. Didn't seem like anythin' ever got her spirits down. She'd say, as long as you had your life and your health and your two strong hands, you could do anythin', get anywhere; just it took time."

"I think I'd have liked your ma," Slim observed. "I think my folks would have, too."

Jess took a breath as if to respond, then seemed to think better of it. He was silent again, his expression inward, as if trying to decide what to say next. After a while: "I want you to understand somethin', Slim. This time that I been here... it's been... it's—"

" 'It's been the best time in maybe forever for me,' " Slim finished. And when the Texan's head snapped around: "You said that to me, that last and worst day you had the fever... when you thought you were about to die. And I've never forgotten it. I think it's... about the best compliment I ever got. It meant a lot to me, to know you felt that way."

"I did. I do," Jess agreed. "Only, like that Bible verse—it don't mean permanent, you know? I recollect one time somebody quoted me an old Cheyenne prayer, somethin' they say when they reckon they're close onto dyin'. _Nothin' lives long, nothin' stays here,/Except the Earth and the mountains."_

"I know that one," Slim agreed. _Now, _he thought, _now he's comin' to it. Now he's ready._

"I never made you no promises," Jess continued. "You know that."

"I know that." Slim carefully kept his tone even, unthreatening.

"And like you said," Jess went on, "what happened down south, that put an end to somethin'—to a big chunk of my life. And bein' one of the last of the Harpers—maybe the last, period; ain't heard from my big brothers since before the fire—I don't want to plumb waste whatever time I got left. That wouldn't... it..." He seemed to run out of words; his hand moved in a helpless gesture.

"You want to make the time you still have count for somethin'," Slim guessed. "You feel you owe that to your people who died. You couldn't avenge them, not the way you wanted to, so you have to... to build them a monument a different way. Like I want to carry on Pa's dream and make this place a success."

"Yeah. Like that, I reckon. Just... ain't quite sure how." Pause again, then: "Stuart offered me a job," Jess mentioned. "Permanent deputy badge."

"I guess it would suit you," Slim observed, again taking care to keep his voice level. "Gonna take it?"

"Thinkin' on it," Jess admitted. "Pay ain't much, but it's honest work. And I'd be headquartered in Cheyenne—not so far from here; if it ever come to you needin' me, I could get back quick enough."

"Yes, if you didn't happen to be off chasin' some outlaw or tryin' to settle a range war when our message got there," Slim pointed out. He took a deep breath and plunged. "And we _do_ need you, Jess. We need you here for good. This is your home. It wouldn't be the same without you, not any more. It hasn't been, all these weeks. We've missed you, all of us. We were worried about you the whole time. And—and I felt more ashamed of myself than I think I ever have in my whole life. Because of what I said to you. I had no right to talk that way. You were absolutely right: if it had been me in your spot, I'd have wanted to settle things personally, just as much as you did." He hesitated a moment, wondering if he should tell Jess about the Parkisons or the gold-shipment gossip, about what they had meant to him, to his family. But it would be a lot of stuff to explain, a lot of information to expect a man in Jess's condition to process. Maybe it would be better to let it go for now. "I guess my motives were right enough; I was afraid you'd get yourself killed, and I didn't want that. You've gotten to be... too big a part of my life, of Andy's and Jonesy's lives. If we'd lost you, we'd have lost a piece of ourselves too. And that still holds, even if what we lose you to is just the Big Open, or the marshals' service, or... whatever else you choose. But still... I shouldn't have said what I said. It was cruel and thoughtless, and I can't tell you how sorry I am for it, how deeply I regret it. I knew better than to say it, even at the time; I knew_ you_ better. I don't have much right to ask, and if you say no I'll understand, but... will you forgive me?"

Jess again seemed about to speak, then thought better of it. Slim wondered if he'd given his friend too much to process after all. _But I had to get it said, all of it, while I still had the courage..._

"Like you said, your motives was right enough," Jess agreed at last. "Man says things, does things, when he's scared, or mad, that he don't when he can stop and think. Shoot, _you_ told me that. Done it myself—like when Roney was here. Ain't nothin' for me to forgive."

"Still," Slim insisted.

"Well, in that case, if it'll make you feel better... yeah, you're forgiven."

The rancher sighed quietly in relief. "Thank you."

"Now," Jess proceeded, in a different voice, one that seemed at once tentative and eager, "about the rest of it. About home. About me bein' a part of your lives."

"I don't lie well, Jess. I'm not comfortable with it and never have been. You know that." Slim met the blue eyes that suddenly seemed almost incandescent in the darkness.

Jess snorted softly. "And you ain't always the easiest feller there is to live with neither, on that account and others," he mentioned.

"Neither are you," said Slim frankly, "but it doesn't mean you don't belong here, Jess. I understand that havin' Stuart show up here the way he did, settin' out from here to finally try to settle the last of your debt... I understand that, in some way, it ties us, this place, to somethin' that... that's painful for you to remember, that you wish had never happened. But if it hadn't happened, we might never have met."

"No," Jess agreed thoughtfully, "I reckon we might not."

"But just because somethin' is a part of one thing," Slim went on slowly, "doesn't mean it can't be—isn't—equally a part of somethin' else. You've been to a lot of towns over the years, I guess; did you ever pass a schoolyard with a fulcrum board in it? The two ends go up and down, and the whole thing pivots around a central point. Each end of the board is a necessary part of the whole, and so is the pivot; it couldn't work the way it does if any of them were taken away. Or a bridge: it has two piers, sometimes more, but they're not much good without somethin' to connect them; and the thing that connects them isn't much good without the piers to hold it up."

Jess was frowning, but it was a frown of puzzlement as he tried to figure out where Slim was going with this. The rancher continued: "Every man is a product of his past, which he can't change; all he can control is how he reacts to it, now and in the future—what he lets it make of him. You learned a lot of things from your parents, from the other people on the ranch, like that boss wrangler you mentioned. Many of those things, maybe most of them, are still useful to you, and can be no matter what you decide to do with your life from here on. Same with the things you learned while you were drifting. They're all a part of you, even if you used them in searchin' for Bannister. You wouldn't give them up—you couldn't, not and still be who you are. Could you?"

Jess took a moment to think about it. "Reckon I couldn't."

"And I mentioned a bridge," Slim reminded him. "Think about a bridge. What is it? It connects two sides of a river. There are bridges in a man's life, too, things that connect two parts of it. This ranch could be a bridge for you, Jess. It's part of two halves of your life. The drifter and fast gun you were when you came, the ranchhand you've become. The time before you finally saw an end made to Bannister, and the time after. Those two halves, past and present, make you who you are this minute, sittin' here on this porch with me. If you destroy the connection between them, what happens then? Nothin' can pass over that gap. No matter how good it is, or how important to your future, it can't pass, not by itself. It needs the bridge to give it a way to go." He met his friend's questioning eyes. "I saw a lot of bridges blown up or burned durin' the war, and I guess you probably did too. I remember the Engineers cussin' about how the Cavalry—like me and my outfit—would do it and leave them with the work of rebuilding. Because in the end they always had to be rebuilt. Don't destroy this bridge, Jess. It could lead you to a lot of better things, things that can help you to—not forget your past, nothin' can do that, and you shouldn't want it to, because it made you who you are; but to build somethin' better on the foundation you've got." Pause, then: "You had a home once, and you lost it. We can't replace it, we wouldn't be—vain enough to think we could; they were your blood kin, and that's a special bond. But we can try to give you somethin' that's just as good. Please stay, Jess, and let us try. Let us help you build that monument. It's like I told you that first day. There's a real future here. Finest cow country in Wyoming. You could make a good life, a life your family would be pleased to know you had."

"Could do that wearin' a badge," Jess pointed out.

Slim's heart sank. It hadn't been enough, after all. _But I can't force him to stay against his will, and I wouldn't want to. _"If that's what you want, yes, you could."

"They wanted me to stay on in Rock Springs, did I tell you that?" Jess pursued. "Be their sheriff. I almost thought about it. But in the end I knew it wasn't where I should be."

Slim looked up, hopeful again. "Like I said, my folks never had much," Jess proceeded. "It ain't that I... well, I ain't learned to care much about... about things, about money. But... well, a lot of lawmen, they may end up with satisfaction, thinkin' about the badmen they've took out of circulation, but they ain't got a lot more'n that. If I could build somethin' on that foundation Ma and Pa left me with, like you said... I reckon that'd be a monument, sure enough. A good way to make sure that folks remember they was there, 'cause if they hadn't been, I wouldn't neither."

"Same as mine," Slim agreed.

"That's right."

"It's good to leave a respected name behind you," Slim said. "I'd never want you to think I didn't believe that. Pa's means a lot to me."

"That's why you care so much about makin' a go of this place."

"That's right," said Slim in turn. "But a name... it only goes so far. To build on what people left you with, not just with... with intangibles, but with things you can see and count... especially if they couldn't leave you with much... that's... that's provin' somethin', I think. Not all of us can get into history books, but all of us can help make history, and one of the best ways we can do that is by leavin' more than was here when we came. Pa thought a man should make his mark on the land, on the world, somethin' that said he'd been there, somethin' folks could look at years afterward and appreciate."

"Like a ranch."

"Like that."

And finally, for the first time since he'd ridden in that afternoon, Jess smiled. A tired smile, but a smile. "Reckon maybe I'd like to be part of that."

Slim felt a great weight lift, finally, off his heart. He shifted off the rail and bent to pick up the bottle Jonesy had given him. "How about we drink a toast to it?" he suggested, and twisted the cap off and splashed the amber-brown liquid into the cups.

Jess accepted one, sniffing curiously at the liquor to gauge its quality. "What are we drinkin' to?"

Slim thought for a moment. "To the past," he said slowly, "because today and tomorrow always come from yesterday. To the future we'll build on it. To clearin' off old debts, and meetin' new challenges. And to findin' a place in the world."

"That sounds like it covers 'most everythin'," Jess agreed, and they drank.

**SR**

"Best if you don't try to climb up in that top bunk, not till you're healed up a little more," Jonesy told Jess when they went in. "I fixed up a bed in the back room for you, and left your saddlebags and blanket roll in there in case you want anything out of 'em, and put out soap and water and towels for morning."

"Thanks, Jonesy," he said. "I reckon I'll turn in now. Been a long day's ride."

"Make that a long _week's_ ride," Slim corrected him gently.

"That too." Jess tousled Andy's hair. "Didn't say thank you for givin' me a hand when I got in, Tiger, with the bath and all."

"You don't need to, Jess," the boy replied. "I'm just so glad you're home—" And he threw his arms around the Texan's middle and hugged him as tightly as he dared. It hurt a little, but Jess didn't care. There was, he realized, such a thing as good pain.

"I kinda lost track of time, out on the trail," he said. "When's Sunday?"

"Three days," Andy told him.

"Then you get your gear together, and we'll ask Jonesy to fix us some grub, and go fishin' up at the lake," Jess promised. "Maybe even try that swimmin' thing again, if my side's up to it."

The boy's smile could have lit the whole cellar. "You bet!" And then, after a pause, tentatively: "Jess? Will you... would you tell me about... about your home? About your folks?"

Jess drew a quick, deep breath, aware of Slim's and Jonesy's eyes on him, knowing that this was, in some way, the final test of whether he'd finally found the peace he'd been seeking all these years. If he could think about them, talk about them, even think about talking about them, without feeling that open wound in his heart— "Sure, Tiger," he said at last, in a soft, quiet voice. "Tell you about Johnny for sure—you remind me a lot of him. And the littl'uns."

"I'd like to hear about 'em," Andy said in the same tone. "I'd really like to. I wish... I wish I could'a known 'em. They must'a' been real special, if you... if you've missed 'em so much all this time."

"No more'n I missed you all while I been gone," Jess said, and was amazed to find that it was true.

In the little second bedroom, he stroked the vivid patchwork comforter that lay on the low bunk, lowered himself carefully onto the sweetgrass tick, and managed, with the help of the notched-board bootjack, to get his boots off. He got up again to open the window, stripped down to his clean longjohn britches, took a deep breath of the pine-rich night air flowing down off the mountain (enduring the sharp twinge he got from his side, because it was such a good smell, a smell he had come to associate with comfort and happiness and the concept of home), hung his clothes on the chair and his gunbelt on the bedpost after his usual custom, and blew out the lamp, then eased his weary body down into bed and punched at the pillow a couple of times.

_Home, _he thought. _Yeah, I reckon I am. 'Cause home—a real, for sure-and-certain home—is a place where folks are always glad to see you when you get there. Where they don't ask questions, they just say it's good to have you back._

_I was wonderin' if I'd changed, or if Slim had, but I reckon we ain't, neither one of us. Unless... just maybe... a little for the better. Like... maybe we understand each other more'n we done before I left._

_Blood's a special bond, Slim said, and that's true. But there's other kinds that can be just as special, just as real, just as strong. No, I ain't leavin' here. Not now, nor ever again, 'less they throw me out. I told myself I needed to know, and I do. This is where I belong._

_It's time to let go, like Dixie said once. 'One day you'll find something or someone—a town, a woman, a cause, a friend—that'll touch that lump of ice you call your heart, and bring you back to life again.' That's what he told me, and I ain't ever forgot it. And I know now he was right, 'cause I found the friend. Shoot, I found more'n one. Maybe more'n just friends, at that._

_I'd'a' never believed it could happen, but it has. I'm home. That old debt's paid, at last, and I found my place in the world. Like Slim... well, didn't quite say, but it's what he meant._

He thought about the other things Slim had said: how he'd understood Jess's feelings of unhappiness and disappointment, had expressed his sympathy for the way fate had cheated him out of his proper due; how he'd asked, with dignity, to be forgiven his mistake; how Jess was needed here, how he'd been missed, how he was part of the place. _Don't reckon as how anybody ever said anythin' like that to me, before tonight, _he told himself.

He sighed deeply, closed his eyes, and drifted off into the best, most restful, refreshing, peaceful sleep he'd had in more years than he liked to think about.

-30-


End file.
